Mexico's electoral body has rejected a request by left-wing candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador for a full recount of votes from July's disputed election. Instead, the electoral tribunal's seven judges ordered a partial recount. Mr Lopez Obrador rejected the ruling and urged his supporters to continue their protests to demand a ballot-by-ballot recount. The 2 July vote gave victory to the conservative candidate, Felipe Calderon, by less than 1%. The electoral tribunal ordered the recount of votes at 11,839 of the country's almost 130,500 polling stations. After the ruling, Mr Lopez Obrador addressed a rally in central Mexico City - where hundreds of thousands of supporters have been holding protests in recent days - and renewed his call for a full recount. If there is no solution, there'll be revolution Lopez Obrador's supporters Readers' experiences "We maintain our ... http://news.bbc.co.uk

Pro-Beijing lawmakers approved legislation here today giving broad authority to the police to conduct covert surveillance, including wiretapping phones, bugging homes and offices and monitoring e-mail. The bill passed the 60-member Legislative Council on a vote of 32 to 0 soon after pro-democracy lawmakers walked out of the chamber in protest early this morning. The Democratic Party and its allies had tried to introduce nearly 200 amendments to the bill through four days of marathon debates, but all were defeated or ruled out of order. Ambrose S.K. Lee, the secretary for security, welcomed the legislation, saying it was necessary to fight crime. “I wish to assure the residents of Hong Kong that the law now is a good balance between effective law enforcement on the one hand and the protection of privacy on the other,” he said. Notice it doesn’t make any difference what Government you have, they all claim they are giving the Police more power to protect you. If fact it is to protect themselves...http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/world/asia/06cnd-hong.html?ex=1312516800&en=7dfae1a64376a9f1&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

To people who know him, Dale S. Hausner simply is too sweet, too timid, to have terrorized city residents in a rash of late night shootings as police said Friday.He was always polite to friends, never rude. A lover of boxing who decorated his room with drawings of his favorite athletes. A father to a 2-year-old girl, and two young sons who died in a car accident."He doesn't even look like he would know which end of the (gun) barrel the bullet would come out of," said Mary Ann Owen, a Las Vegas photographer who has known Hausner since 1999.Hausner and Samuel John Dieteman, his alleged accomplice, have each been booked on two counts of first-degree murder in last Sunday's killing of Robin Blasnek and the May 2 killing of Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz. They also were accused of 13 counts of attempted first-degree murder for a series of attacks since May 2005....http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/08/05/arizona.killings.hausner.ap/index.html?section=cnn_us

Officials are recommending that nearly 1,000 Girl Scouts who may have been exposed to rabies at a Northern Virginia camp consider getting protective vaccinations. There is only a small chance that any of the girls were infected by bats that were found in some of the sleeping shelters at Camp Potomac Woods, Loudoun County officials said.But authorities are erring on the side of caution because around 1 percent of bats carry rabies, a viral disease that is incurable once symptoms appear. Bats can bite children in their sleep without waking them."We think the risk is extremely small, but we can't say there is no risk," Loudoun County Health Department Director David Goodfriend said. "Really, at the end of the day, it's the parents' decision of what level of risk they are willing to bear."...http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,207204,00.html

An Iraqi army medic told a U.S. military hearing Sunday he was sick for weeks after finding the naked and burned body of a 14-year-old girl allegedly raped and murdered by American soldiers south of Baghdad. The medic gave his testimony on the opening day of a hearing to determine whether five U.S. soldiers must stand trial in the March 12 rape-slaying of Abeer Qassim al-Janabi and the killing of her parents and sister. It is among the worst in a series of cases of alleged abuse of Iraqis by American soldiers.The medic, whose name was withheld for security reasons, told the hearing that he was the first responder to enter the house and found the girl sprawled naked in the house, her torso and head burned by flames. She had a single bullet wound under her left eye, he said....http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,207210,00.html

Fifteen local aid staff working on post-tsunami rebuilding have been found executed in northeast Sri Lanka after heavy fighting, the main umbrella body for aid agencies in the country said on Sunday.There had been reports and rumors that the local aid workers had been killed. The Consortium for Humanitarian Agencies (CHA) said that one of the relief teams that reached the battered town of Mutur had found the corpses in an aid agency office."They found them in the office on the ground, lying face down -- executed," said CHA chief Jeevan Thiagarajah.He said it was not clear who had killed them. Mutur town has seen days of fighting between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels....http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/08/06/srilanka.aidworkers.reut/index.html?section=cnn_world